This diploma thesis deals with the problems of tax evasion which is achieved through the use of tax havens. The aim of this paper is to identify the impacts of implementation of the new instruments to fight tax evasion on existence of tax havens. The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical part. The theoretical part defines basic tax concepts, harmful tax competition, methods of international tax planning and tax evasion. The main part of the theoretical part is the definition of tax havens, their use, typology and current initiatives that fight against the use of tax havens. The practical part contains an analysis of motives for the transfer of profits to tax havens and impact of implementation of the new instruments on these activities; and an analysis of specific tax schemes together with proposals for possible tax administration procedures against tax evasion. Examples present activities of taxpayers using tax havens to reduce tax liability. The results of the analyses are the negative impact on the existence of tax havens and an outline of the possible future development of the tax havens issues.

This diploma thesis examines an impact of a nitrogen-sulphur fertilizer with and without a nitrification inhibitor on a yield and quality of a winter wheat grain. From a qualitative feature there has been observed an impact of fertilizers on a volume weight, nitrogen substances, gluten and sedimentation value. The research was conducted in a form of small fields experiment in a business year 2015/2016, 2016/2017 and 2017/2018 in a different localities. The first locality can be found on a South Moravia region specifically at experimental fields of School agricultural enterprise in Žabčice and the second is at Research fodder plants station in Vatín in Vysočina. There has been included five different variants in a research. 1. Unfertilized, 2. CAN + CAN, 3. ANAS + CAN (ammonium nitrate + ammonium sulfate), 4. CAN + ANAS, 5. CAN + ENSIN (ammonium nitrate + ammonium sulfate + inhibitor of nitrification). The results show, that an influence of fertilizer was influenced by a weather conditions in a particular year, when was yield increased in a 2016/2017 by 30 % against a previous year. The yield was also influenced by localities in which has been held. The difference was also between individual variants of fertiliszrs where the variant LAD + ENSIN performed the best with an average yield of 8,18 t/ha. Regarding the qualitative parameters of grain there has been also differences between individual years, localities and also fertiliser variants, however some of the values did not fulfilled norms for a food wheat, so the wheat is in general evaluated as a fodder wheat because the values for the volume weight of winter wheat grain were not met. The economic profit of the research was the best in variant LAD + ENSIN, where were finally displayed transportation savings and amount of applied fertilisers.

As the impacts of climate change intensify, businesses are increasingly committing to ambitious sustainable development goals, yet an enduring disconnect remains between corporate sustainability activities and declining global environment and society. This study adopts a complexity view that reductionism associated with Newtonian thinking has played a key role in creating many of the sustainability issues now faced by humanity. This dissertation departs from the premise that sustainability needs to be integrated into an organisation and uses a complexity view to argue that corporate sustainability is a co-evolutionary process of emergence. Whilst many studies have examined how sustainability can be integrated into a business, less is known about corporate sustainability as an emergent process. To address the knowledge gap, this research answered three questions: (1) How does sustainability emerge in financial institutions? (2) What is the role of coherence in the emergence of sustainability? and (3) What conditions enable the emergence of sustainability? A mixed method sequential design was used. In the initial quantitative strand of the research, a holistic business assessment survey based on integral theory was implemented in two financial services organisations in Southern Africa. The results were analysed using self-organising maps and explored in narrative interviews in the subsequent qualitative strand of the research. The study makes three contributions to our understanding of emergence in corporate sustainability. First, by proposing four modes by which corporate sustainability is enacted; these elucidate how integral domains are enacted in corporate sustainability. Second, by clarifying the process of emergence by articulating how zones of coherence emerge between embodied and embedded dimensions. Third, by explaining how the shift to corporate sustainability occurs by means of four conditions. These contributions serve to advance our understanding of corporate sustainability as a fundamental shift in the functioning of an organisation towards coevolutionary self-organisation. It is recommended that corporate sustainability is holistically cultivated to support emergence and self-organisation, rather than being integrated through a linear process of change.

West Lafayette; Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are commonly and widely applied in current numerous devices such as smart phones, laptops, electric vehicles and medical devices. The LIBs are considered as a mature technology in todays commercial market bene ted from their uncomplicated lithium intercalation and de-intercalation reactions, stable cycling performance and good working life as energy storage devices and power resources. However, the conventional LIBs with technical limits such as high weight, low lithium utilization and low speci c energy density hit the bottlenecks of further improvements and optimizations for meeting the growing power supply requirements. It is urgent to develop the second generations of rechargeable lithium batteries, which have the bene ts of low cost, high speci c capacity and high energy density with light weight. In this context, lithium-sulfur batteries (LSBs) and lithium-selenium (Li-Se) batteries attract much attention due to the high possibility to meet the requirements of high speci c capacity and high energy density. However, the technical challenges they are facing put some barriers before they can be successfully commercialized. By a brief summary, the challenges to be solved are current low energy density because of requiring large amount of liquid electrolyte, the highly ammability and unsafety of lithium metal, low active material content due to the necessary requirement of carbon and binder, and severe so-called shuttle effect resulting in low Coulombic effciency. Before solving these challenges, Li-S batteries or Li-Se batteries are unlikely to be successfully commercialized in our market. Therefore, numerous research is aimed at solving the challenges and further developing more advanced Li-S and Li-Se battery systems. In the present dissertation, the contributions are mainly focused on sulfur-based and selenium-based materials, which aim to solve the current existing challenges and improve the battery performance, herein obtain a higher potential for application. Four chapters are included in this dissertation, which aim to present the four studied projects. The rst research conducted in this dissertation is developing organo S/Se hybrid materials which require low E/S ratios of liquid electrolyte and show light shuttle effect, therefore indicate promising high energy density and cycling life. Secondly, the tin foil is used as lithium sources instead of metallic lithium anode, then incorporated with sulfur cathode as a full cell. The full cell design provides the potential using a metallic anode other than pure lithium and increase the safety factor of a battery system. In addition, nano-scale selenium/carbon nanotubes composite electrode is synthesized via a chemical reduction method. With the optimization on thickness of the composite electrodes, the Se cathode has an active material content of ~60% and shows stable long cycling life with maximizing the utilization of selenium. The nal research conducted in this dissertation is applying a macro molecule named cyanostar, which has the ability to chemically bind with polysul de species, thereupon to alleviate the shuttle effect in Li-S batteries. With the evidence from chemistry analysis and electrochemical comparison results presented in this dissertation, cyanostar is proven to have the potential for further applications in Li-S batteries.

Det blir alltmer populärt med miljöcertifieringar på byggprojekt och det finns idag ett flertal olika system att använda sig av. Tre av de mest populära systemen i Sverige är Miljöbyggnad, BREEAM SE och LEED. Dessa tre miljöcertifieringssystem bedömer projekten på olika sätt, där Miljöbyggnad anses vara det enklaste av dem. Syftet med denna rapport är att undersöka hur Miljöbyggnad står sig mot de två andra systemen sett till vilka indikatorer som bedöms, hur viktigt beställare anser att det är med miljöcertifieringar idag samt hur de ställer sig till de olika vägar som finns för att nå en betygsnivå. Detta har jämförts genom en litteraturstudie av dessa tre miljöcertifieringssystems manualer samt intervjuer med personer som jobbar med projekt som arbetar efter miljöcertifieringar. Resultatet av litteraturstudierna och intervjuerna har sedan sammanställts i berättande form samt tabeller. Av resultatet framgår att miljöcertifieringar idag anses som väldigt viktiga för både beställare, entreprenörer och hyresgäster. Vilken certifiering det blir behöver inte vara lika viktig, men kan styras av både ekonomi och internationell status. Då olika projekt har olika förutsättningar bedöms det även som positivt att dessa olika betygsnivåer inom miljöcertifieringssystemen går att uppnå på olika sätt. / It is becoming increasingly popular with environmental certifications on the project and today there are several different systems to use. Three of the most popular systems in Sweden are Miljöbyggnad, BREEAM SE and LEED. These three environmental certification systems assess the projects in different ways, where Miljöbyggnad is considered the simplest of them.  The purpose of this report is to examine how Miljöbyggnad compares with the other two systems in terms of which indicators are assessed, how important the customer considers environmental certifications to be today and how the view the various paths that exist to a grade level.  This has been compared through a literature study of the manuals of these three environmental certification systems as well as interviews with people who work with such. The results of the literature studies and interviews have then been compared in narrative form and tables.  The results show that environmental certifications are today considered to be very important for both customers and contractors. The type of certification does not have to be as important but can be governed by both financial and international status. As different projects have different conditions, it is also considered positive that these different grade levels within the environmental certification systems can be achieved in different ways. / <p>2022-09-22</p>

About a decade ago, Adam Elga introduced philosophers to an intriguing puzzle. In it, Sleeping Beauty, a perfectly rational agent, undergoes an experiment in which she becomes ignorant of what time it is. This situation is puzzling for two reasons: First, because there are two equally plausible views about how she will change her degree of belief given her situation and, second, because the traditional rules for updating degrees of belief don't seem to apply to this case. In this dissertation, my goals are to settle the debate concerning this puzzle and to offer a new rule for updating some types of degrees of belief. Regarding the puzzle, I will defend a view called "the Lesser view," a view largely favorable to the Thirders' position in the traditional debate on the puzzle. Regarding the general rule for updating, I will present and defend a rule called "Shifted Jeffrey Conditionalization." My discussions of the above view and rule will complement each other: On the one hand, I defend the Lesser view by making use of Shifted Jeffrey Conditionalization. On the other hand, I test Shifted Jeffrey Conditionalization by applying it to various credal transitions in the Sleeping Beauty problem and revise that rule in accordance with the results of the test application. In the end, I will present and defend an updating rule called "General Shifted Jeffrey Conditionalization," which I suspect is the general rule for updating one's degrees of belief in so-called tensed propositions.

See file / Se bif. dokument

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Uncoupling protein, a mitochondrial inner membrane protein found in mammalian brown adipose tissue, functions as an uncoupler of oxidative phosphorylation by serving as a proton carrier when activated, resulting in heat production, the function of the tissue. Unlike most nuclear-encoded mitochondrial proteins, uncoupling protein is not made with a cleavable presequence. With the availability of an uncoupling protein cDNA clone, the region responsible for targeting uncoupling protein to mitochondria was examined using in vitro transcription and translation and import into isolated mitochondria. In order to localize the targeting sequence of uncoupling protein, fusion proteins containing portions of uncoupling protein and uncoupling protein modified by site-directed mutagenesis were constructed and analysed for their ability to be imported. Previously it has been shown that there was a targeting signal within uncoupling protein amino acids 13 to 105 (Liu et al., 1988). However, amino acids 13 to 51 did not target a passenger protein to mitochondria (Liu et al., 1988). Here the role of amino acids 53 to 105 of uncoupling protein in targeting was examined with two new constructs, uncoupling protein amino acids 53 to 105 joined to rat ornithine carbamoyltransferase amino acids 147 to 354 and to mouse dihydrofolate reductase. These two constructs along with uncoupling protein with amino acids 2 to 51 deleted were imported into mitochondria consistent with uncoupling protein amino acids 53 to 105 having a potential targeting role in uncoupling protein. Further, these three constructs were processed upon import. The major processed forms of all three constructs are approximately 20 amino acids smaller than the initial translation product. Both fusion constructs also have an intermediate-sized processed form approximately 14 amino acids smaller than the initial translation product. Processing suggests that at least the amino terminus of these proteins has reached the mitochondrial matrix. The location of the proteins was examined using Na2CO3 extraction. Uncoupling protein and U13-105-OCT (uncoupling protein amino acids 13 to 105 joined to ornithine carbamoyltransferase amino acids 147 to 354) were found in the membrane fraction while the processed forms of Ud2-51 (uncoupling protein with amino acids 2 to 52 deleted) and U53-105-DHFR (uncoupling protein amino acids 53 to 105 joined to dihydrofolate reductase) were found in the aqueous fraction suggesting that uncoupling protein amino acids 2 to 52/53 are involved in membrane localization. Analysis of Ud2-35 (uncoupling protein with amino acids 2 to 35 deleted) revealed that it was associated with both the membrane and aqueous fractions. Analysis of uncoupling protein amino acids 53 to 105 revealed the potential existence of two positively charged amphipathic a-helices. Based on the sizes of processed forms and on the helical wheel projection for the first possible sequence, arginine54 , lysine56 and lysine67 were changed to glutamines, individually and in various combinations using oligonucleotide site-directed mutagenesis. All mutant proteins were imported into mitochondria even when all three basic amino acids were replaced. The results suggest that this portion of uncoupling protein, amino acids 54 to 67, is not a targeting signal in the protein. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)